ABSTRACT
When large numbers of Jewish immigrants began pouring into London’s East End in the 1880s, poverty, health and other social problems had been matters of national concern for some fifty years. Widespread belief in Jews’ ‘racial’ distinctiveness and the theory that certain common diseases rarely affected Jews stimulated medical research. 1 Jewish scientists mirrored the typical range of views of their era. Some denied the concept of race altogether; others accepted it, but denied Jews’ inferiority. Still others pointed to Jewish ‘racial adaptability’. 2 Leaders favouring both open and restricted immigration used such results to promote their views on the impact of aliens on British society.
